Originally posted on 2018-09-21
This was the first time I ever tried roofing, and I am sure that anyone with any experience with roofing will spend the majority of this article shaking their head or face palming. You have been duly warned.
1) Roofing isn’t difficult, but it is hard
I want to start by saying that I know most professionals are not hired because no one else can do the job when things go smooth, they are hired because they know what to do when things go wrong. True even for all the things I consider myself good at. With that being said, I didn’t find roofing all that difficult. Line up the shingle, hammer in some nails, cut the ends and around things. Not difficult (at least once I got the hang of swinging a hammer, but more on that later), but it is hard. Being up on the roof in the heat is not a picnic. The wind feels nice, but it blows things around. And your arms are SORE after a full day of swinging a hammer.
2) It is worth it to get the proper tools, even if you don’t think so at first
If you are planning on doing your own roof, the best piece of advice we can give you is to get a roof rake. It makes removing the old roof so much easier, and if you have 2 people, get 2 of them. I can’t really comment on if you have more than 2 people, but I can tell you that after a day with only one we ran out and got a second one. You will also want a hammer that you can comfortably swing for several hours. Or, better yet, get a nail gun. I really wish that we had a nail gun. Rent scaffolding, as starting the roof is much nicer when you can start off the roof. Point is, tools are your friend.
3) There is a lot more to properly doing a roof than just shingles
I know many people probably already knew this, but I didn’t know that you had to have stuff on the roof under the shingles. I had no idea going into this that we would require more than just roof decking and shingles, but we got asphalt felt, starter strips, leak barrier, shingles, and ridge caps. So, for anyone that doesn’t know, the asphalt felt gets laid over the whole roof, starting at the bottom and overlapping the previous piece, except for the edge and over the ridge. There you use the leak barrier instead. Starter strips are exactly what they sound like. You put them down before you start with the shingles, working up from the bottom. Lastly, ridge caps are what you use at the peak. Up until now, I had no idea those were different from the shingles used over the rest of the roof.
4) It uses more than you may think
When the skids of the roofing materials arrived, I was convinced that despite the math that was done we had ordered way too much. Now that we are mostly done the roof, I worry a little that we may not have enough. Every time that we’ve tried to bring up just enough to finish the section we were working on, we came up short unless we were at a point that we could actually count what we needed. I’m also not talking only about shingles. Roofing takes A LOT of nails. I ended up filling up my tool belt with nails way more often than I thought I would.
5) Always keep the asphalt felt roll perpendicular to the slope of the roof
That pretty much says it all. You want to keep the roll of asphalt felt perpendicular to the roof slope, else it may roll off the roof, fall the one story to the ground, land on your daughter’s toy bus, and crush the corners of it making you officially the worst mom in the universe for not being more careful. (Yes, that actually happened.) On the plus side, also learned that a roll of asphalt felt can fall off the roof, land on a toy bus, and be completely unharmed. On a second plus side, my daughter was surprisingly forgiving of the whole thing, so I must be doing something right.
6) There isn’t really anything great to wear for roofing
Especially if it’s warm out. We were lucky to do our roof in September, so it wasn’t stupid hot, but it was still really warm. Warm enough to want to wear shorts, but kneeling on shingles in shorts? Bad idea. I didn’t even really like resting my hand on them to push myself back up. So pants it is, but as I mentioned, it get hot up on that roof. As far as I am able to tell, this is an unwinnable conundrum. At least we could take a break, go swimming, and cool off before getting back at it. I seriously can’t imagine doing this without that option.
7) Pushing yourself on day one at the expense of day two isn’t worth it
This probably should be a “duh” situation, but we still had to learn this one the hard way. We had a couple of days where Grandpa & Grandma were sweet enough to take the little one, so we thought if we pushed it we could get done a lot of work. Really pushed ourselves the first day she was gone and ended the day exhausted, but hopeful that we would hit our target. The problem? We woke up the next morning still exhausted. We got to work, but we could not physically go at the same speed that we had maintained on day one. We came nowhere near hitting what we were hopeful we could do, and instead only got done what we originally thought was reasonable.
8) Heights can be uncomfortable, even if you love being up high
I love heights. I spent my childhood climbing up on things and sitting on the edge of things, much to the discomfort of my mother who had a fear of heights. I can’t even tell you the number of times she had to tell me to stop sitting in my window or that the roof was not a good place to read a book. I spent my entire childhood going out of my way to be up high as often as possible, but even with that background nailing a shingle at the edge of a two story roof can be a little uncomfortable. It’s a long way down, and that’s hard to ignore regardless of how much you like heights.
9) The difference between being terrible at something and being good at something is simply doing it
When we started the roof, I could not swing a hammer. Pathetic, I know. At the beginning of the project I was tapping the nails in and most of the time I was holding my hammer with two hands. I had never really used a hammer before and I worried that the roof was going to take so long, or my husband was just going to tell me to forget helping because of my inability to use a hammer. What changed? I used the hammer. That’s it. A week of spending my days having to hammer in nails was all it took for me to start hammering properly. By the time we were finished the parts we are done, I was only marginally less efficient than my husband. Also, it feels good to learn a skill, no matter how mundane, so I encourage all of you to go out and just start doing something you want to learn how to do. You will mess it up, and it will take time, but not doing it isn’t going to help.
10) I have zero desire to be a roofer
Suspected this long before we started this project, but this definitely confirmed it. Zero desire to do roofing for a living. I don’t want to be obligated to do a roof no matter what the weather is or being on a roof all day, every day. It was enjoyable and I got a sense of accomplishment when it was finished, but to end one roof just to move on to another one? No thank you. One roof every few years is enough for me.
Huron The Lake 